


What's A Little Galaxy-Wide Destruction Between Friends?

by Turquoisephoenix



Category: Ratchet & Clank
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Killer Robot Has Squishy Feelings for Fragile Squishy, Minor Discussion of Gore, They're Friends But Implied Feelings of the Romantic Sort Kinda, They're still good friends despite one being an evil killer robot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23417071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turquoisephoenix/pseuds/Turquoisephoenix
Summary: Five days after saving the galaxy from the Deplanetizer, Elaris is greeted by an old friend, who wishes to talk to her, vent a little, and give her life advice. Unfortunately for her, her old friend also happens to be a freshly transformed robot version of a dangerous criminal madman that everyone believed was dead. [Post-Movie] [One-Shot] [Elaris/Dr. Nefarious friendship]
Relationships: Elaris & Dr. Nefarious, Elaris/Dr. Nefarious
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes: I saw the movie and immediately made the connection between Elaris and Nefarious, and by god, I was going to get this down.
> 
> I realize this isn't the first "Nefarious talks to Elaris about her job" fic out there, but I kinda wanted to write a version where Nefarious and Elaris were friends before the whole evil thing kinda split them apart and, despite everything, they still have positive feelings about each other. 
> 
> It was a challenge writing Nefarious as a mixture of absolutely terrifying and also completely vulnerable and a bit in a fragile state. It's been a bad last couple of days for Nefarious. 
> 
> Also I was going to explain where Lawrence came from but it also came off as more "fitting" that he just *has* Lawrence.

"Yep, this sure is Umbris alright."

Elaris, technical support of the Galactic Rangers and one of the saviors of the galaxy a mere five days ago, was doing a menial patrol shift above the atmosphere of Umbris with no one to keep her company.

Despite not being in her expertise and despite this being a rather boring shift, Elaris had asked to be on Galactic Ranger patrol today. She got a few questions from her coworkers - after all, today was double XP weekend and a holiday event in League of Legendaries and they expected her to be holed up in her lab for days - but she won out in the end. She took the same spaceship she normally did, a beaten up little thing that could be best described as "dependable" and "cozy" and nothing more. 

She didn't want to admit it out loud, but she was getting cabin fever from being in her in the lab, just a glorified broom closet, all day. She was kinda hoping that, by helping with the Deplanetizer and helping to save the galaxy, she would at least get a bit of a laboratory upgrade as a reward. Instead, with the media breathing down their necks and Qwark doing his big apology tour, her tiny comments of "can I please get a proper laboratory?" were written down as "things to do later" as they asked the new rookie Ratchet question after question of his upbringing and his mysterious past.

And she couldn't help but feel that she was going to be in that broom closet for quite a while now.

Sitting alone in a spaceship - with no sound to greet her but the steady hum of all the ship's computers - while keeping an eye on the airspace of a muddy, near uninhabited planet was at least brightening her mood a bit and allowing her to clear her head.

Anything to get her mind off the fact that the weapons technician before her died in the process.

That was the biggest bummer of the whole Deplanetizer ordeal in her eyes. At the end of the day, Dr. Nefarious was _dead._ He fell from a space station onto the surface of planet Umbris and that was that. Elaris was hoping that they'd be able to arrest him and that she'd get a chance to talk to him somehow, but instead they found a barely identifiable pile of flesh that had his DNA.

She couldn't help herself. She felt sad that he had to die like that. 

Her other coworkers in the Galactic Rangers thought that she was being too idealistic about her old science partner and friend, that Dr. Nefarious was too far gone even _before_ he tried to blow up the entire galaxy with a giant laser. But she wasn't asking for any miracles. She just wanted to ask him _why_. 

And if he was thrown into a maximum security cell for the rest of his life after she asked him what was going on in his giant skull of his, that would be enough for her. They haven't spoken in two years and it'd be nice to hear his voice again, even if his voice could not be described as pleasing to the ear. 

But now she couldn't, because he was nothing but a pile of squishy goo on planet Umbris.

Fitting to her mood, as she contemplated her now dead friend, the lights in her spaceship began to flicker ominously. "No, no, no, no-" she pleaded with the ship's computer before the lighting system went dead.

"Oh come _on_!" she shouted to the spaceship as she was enveloped in darkness. The universe sure knew how to tell sick jokes sometimes. Muttering about budget cuts, she got up from her seat and walked towards the back where she could probably whack the power supply with a wrench until it began working again.

She didn't get that far. She entered the hallway connecting the cockpit to the other small quarters of her spaceship while complaining about how she should've checked the fuses before she left headquarters when a shape with glowing eyes detached itself from the shadows, skittered over to her position, and then suddenly pressed her against the wall in the span of two seconds. 

"Don't. Sound. The Alarm."

Elaris stood paralyzed, a cold metallic claw wrapped around her face. The main source of illumination in the dark hallway came from piercing red eyes set in black, empty eye sockets of the most terrifying robot she's ever seen. It was a bony creature with sharp metal claws and fearsome wings, looming over her even in its hunched over position, smelling of the same harsh cleaning chemicals used to remove blood stains off of metallic surfaces. Acid green lighting came from the creature's skull, transparent and revealing the many horrible devices whirring within.

Her immediate thought was that some horrible zombie robot had risen from the grave and came to wreak vengeance for his fallen crew as she stared at the skeletal features. Her mind racing, she wondered just what ancient pirate curse was roaming around this sector as the creature watched her squirm.

"Elaris, it's me." the horrific creature said in a electronic voice that sounded oddly familiar. The voice was high and gravelly and grating to her ears, but it unlocked memories of several years ago when her fellow Galactic Ranger Dr. Nefarious was yelling at Qwark from another room that yes, he was still working on the Combusters, _Qwark_ , and that if he continued rushing him he was going to shove them right up his-

" _Nefarious!?_ " Elaris shouted, which sounded like "Mmmarmemous?" through the hand placed on her mouth. 

"I am going to let you go now, and when I do, I want you do not run away or to scream or anything like that! I just want to talk!" Dr. Nefarious continued. "Got it?"

She nodded, her brain immediately noting the cosmic irony in this situation. Gently, he removed his hand from her face and quietly backed up a step, watching her as she shrank against the wall. Immediately he cackled in the kind of laughter that sounded more anxious than joyful.

"Good! Good! You're not calling the Rangers or trying to pull a weapon on me! You're actually going to listen to me that's-" he quickly broke out in a giggle that sounded both nervous and utterly deranged. "You know honestly I didn't expect to get this far!"

As the panic melted away to be replaced with a more cautious fear, Elaris could examine him more closely. She worked with sentient and non-sentient robots on a daily basis - hell, one of her coworkers was one - but he looked...uncanny. 

He was _breathing_ for one, something even the most realistic robots never did. His movements were too lifelike, from the way he could set his jaw to the movements of his eyes. He was very twitchy, his parts fidgeting in a way that was normal with organic lifeforms but looked neurotic on robots. This was not a simple consciousness transfer into a robot double as a back-up in case his organic body was destroyed; this robot clearly worked from the same blueprint as his original body.

Or _was_ his original body, just horrifically modified. 

Mentally she placed her memory of Nefarious over this creature and could pick out places where things were missing. He was skinnier, his facial features gone as if forcefully removed. If Nefarious had built himself a robot double, he would've remembered his ears and nose. Something about this robot creature seemed...wrong.

 _'He didn't plan this,'_ Elaris thought. _'Something else **did this** to him.'_

"What....happened to you with the Deplanetizer?" Elaris asked. ' _I thought you were dead_ ' remained unspoken but very much implied. She reached out to touch him and he flinched away from her hand with a tiny yelp, a very fresh and vivid memory of pain flashing through his databanks. She withdrew her hand and he exhaled - there he was doing more things that was really creepy for robots to do - and ran a hand up his glass dome of a head.

"I survived the fall from the space station to the planet's surface. Thankfully my prototype armor suit was able to keep me from not dying, falling from a great height like that, but I was badly injured, and I was swarmed by a bunch of repair droids. They're programmed to help with situations like a rescue but they were confused. They mistook my armor's energy frequencies as a part of me so they..." a tiny sob got caught in his throat from the memory as his shoulders sagged and he looked down at his hands. "-ha...thought I was a robot..."

He paused and looked up at her and a heavy silence fell between them. The very implications of what he said hung in the air. She said nothing but judging by his changed expression, which looked absolutely wounded, her face was betraying just how horrific she found this. Another not-quite-a-robot sigh.

"...I kept telling them to stop. I would black out at times, so I don't even remember how long I was being operated on. Even when my vocal cords weren't online yet, I was pleading for them to stop. They...left a big SQUISHY pile of my removed organs and skin and bone in a corner and _still_ I was screaming at them to reverse it!"

Suddenly he slammed the palms of his hands into the wall and his voice turned into a harsh, metallic yell.

"AT ONE POINT THEY PULLED MY BRAIN OUT OF MY SKULL WHILE I WAS STILL CONSCIOUS!"

"Oh..." She wasn't sure what else to say beyond that. Sorry? Ouch? She wasn't sure if a friendly assuring pat on the back would do it in this situation either since he seemed very adverse to touch right now.

"I needed to talk to someone - besides Lawrence -and well, I knew what your spaceship looked like, figured, oh hey, might as well talk to an old friend!" 

And climb into the spaceship uninvited through an airlock and mess with the programming for the lights so that he could surprise her in the cloak of darkness without the risk of her shooting him first (because who can blame her?) but he didn't mention that. 

"That's why I'm here. To vent a little and finally tell you stuff I've been meaning to tell you! You know, before my mind snaps and I become a mindless creature of destruction with my new robot body." 

Elaris stared at him, trying to decipher if that last part was a joke or an actual worry of his. Nefarious always did have a dry sense of humor. It didn't help like his smile looked absolutely terrifying. 

"Like...?"

Another deep robotic breath. Did he have lungs? Did the repair bots keep some of his organ systems intact?

"I want you to quit the Galactic Rangers." he said, pressing the tips of his fingers together.

"Wait, what." was her immediate reply. The gruesome metal skeleton of her former science partner was going to give her _career advice?_

"Hear me out! I've been meaning to have this conversation with you for a while now after I left but, wouldn't you know it, I was tied up with work." The word "work" was doing a lot of heavy lifting in this conversation. He said it real casually, like the prison escape and the faking of his own death in order to join up with a criminal and start blowing up planets was just another blip on his resume. 

"Elaris, I know how they're treating you. They gave you my old office after all. You know, the one that's just a glorified converted _broom closet!_ " She winced, his words cutting deep. "I know exactly how they behave and I know for a fact that they just treat you like a doormat and like an automatic weapon dispenser! They call you a Galactic Ranger but you're not a part of their little friend group! They see you as a _nerd_ , a passive little thing they can push around! You're not one of them!"

"I'm a little confused..." she started, saying the understatement of the century. She didn't get this patrol shift to get a pep talk from an undead robot after all. "You come onto my spaceship, back from the dead, all the flesh torn from your bones, but...instead of asking me to join you, get the recognition you truly deserve and have all your dreams come true by storming the galaxy side by side, yadda yadda, you...just want me to hand them a pink slip and leave?"

"Elaris, despite what it looks like, I'm not trying to sound like a lunatic here." he said, dragging his hand across his face.

"I just want you to get a better job than the one you have now! I don't want you to continue to be abused by those people - by QWARK - until the bitterness inside of you grows and grows until you snap and become just. Like. Me!"

"And I'll be honest - I don't _want_ what happened to me to happen to you! LOOK AT ME!" he said, gesturing at himself.

She was about to respond with a retort that she was positive she wasn't going to land on a planet full of repair droids while wearing highly experimental armor that confuses them and they turn her into a robot in an incredibly gruesome and long surgical procedure, but Nefarious could see she was thinking just that and held up a hand, silencing her.

"Please....just get a desk job or a job working at a computer repair store. Anything where you don't have to work with _Captain Qwark_. He's using you the way he did me! And trust me, he's never going to stop! He's never going to change! He'll abuse you and think nothing of it because no one cares about people like us!"

"But I won't end up like you!" Elaris shouted back, their faces so close that they were nearly touching.

Nefarious's voice suddenly dropped to a normal speaking volume. 

"How can you be so sure?"

Silence fell. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, withering under his gaze as he folded his hands underneath his chin and examined her. The worst part about it was that he didn't look smug or mocking. He just looked tired.

"Why do you even care?" she asked, dodging the question. 

"Because I like you, Elaris. All the other losers in the Galactic Rangers can go end up in a black hole for all I care but I don't want _you_ getting hurt!" 

Elaris had to admit, she was a little stunned hearing that come out of his mouth. ' _Well, chalk that up as one positive trait for Dr. Nefarious, he actually has the capacity to care about other people while he's going about trying to blow up other planets._ ' she thought to herself as she tried to decipher his concern as genuine or just an insane whim.

"That's all?" Elaris asked.

"That's all." he replied. Elaris couldn't help but make a little snort of disbelief in response, causing the robot to instantly be defensive. "What?"

"Oh nothing. Just a little amused that you look like the specter of death and climb into my spaceship after returning from the dead, emerging like a horrendous butterfly out of a fleshy mound of rotting flesh, one of the most wanted criminals in the entire galaxy, but you came into my spaceship to admit you still have _feelings_ for me."

She immediately regretted saying that for two reasons. The first reason was that she realized that she shouldn't be making fun of the madman who had just been turned into a robot. The second reason was that caused Dr. Nefarious to start ranting very loudly, and that made Elaris realize that one of the side-effects of being turned into a robot was the loss of the ability to have an indoor voice.

"Yes, YES, it sounds crazy!" he screamed. "I sound crazy right now! That's the problem with this new robot body! Instead of being emotionless, like what you'd expect when you're transformed into a robot, it's like the exact opposite happened! All of my emotions have been intensified a thousand degrees! This worry became a paranoia! My hatred is now burning with an intensity of a thousand angry suns! My bitterness is like raging venom in my heart!"

"You have a heart still?"

"I DON'T KNOW!!! See? SEE? I'm SHOUTING! I'm MONOLOGUING! I don't MEAN to shout but then it just comes out ALL LOUD AND INTENSE AND GOES ON FOREVER _aaaaaand_ oh GOD I _am_ losing my mind aren't I?" His last vestiges of sanity - tiny and rapidly going extinct, but still there and doing a valiant effort to keep him from being totally lost to reason - suddenly halted his rant in mid-sentence, causing him to drag his hands across his face. It's been a week for Dr. Nefarious, where being hit in the face with a wrench by a Lombax was the least of his worries.

"- _please_ tell me I don't look like a complete nutcase right now."

Elaris sucked in air through her teeth and looked away from him in embarrassment. "Uh...do you want the truth or a little white lie?" she asked.

"I don't know! Give me whatever makes me feel better!"

"You don't look like complete nutcase."

Nefarious narrowed his eyes at her as she smiled innocently back and he looked ready to say something when suddenly a very crusty, digitized version of the pop song "Your Eyes Are Like Quazars" started playing.

"Hang on." He pulled out a cell phone out of his belt - flip phone model - and held it to the closest thing on his metallic skull that could be called "an ear". He shot her a "I'm sorry I know this looks rude but this could be important" look at her as a very dignified voice rang out from the other line.

"I do hate to bother you, sir, but you might want to wrap up whatever it is you're doing to that Galactic Ranger-"

"We're just _TALKING_ , Lawrence!"

"-right. Anyhoo, there is another patrol ship heading your way and I'd hate for your current plans of lying low for a couple months to plot out your next scheme of horrible vengeance to be ruined because you wanted to talk to your old girlfriend."

"SHE'S _NOT_ -ugh, _fine_. FINE, I'm GOING!" he said, and hung the phone up with an undignified clack of the flip phone closing in-between two metal claws.

"Just think about what I said, Elaris!" he yelled dramatically while pointing at her as he shoved his phone away in his back pocket. She wasn't going to question why he had pockets as a robot. There were a lot of things about this situation she was just not going to question.

"I wouldn't do this if I didn't have this fear that you're going to walk the same path that I did! Call it weakness or the last remaining thread of my former organic self! ...or craziness. I dunno. I'm kinda playing it by ear at this point." he said, twirling a finger in the air, as he started to move his way towards the airlock.

"Wait, before you go-"

She reached out and grabbed his hand, and when he turned to glare at her, eyes filling the hallway with a harsh red light, Elaris briefly wondered if she made a horrible mistake and that this was going to be the moment where he snaps and uses his cold metal claws to claim his first victim in a gruesome robotic rampage. But then his expression softened and he just looked grumpy, the killer robot expression fading away.

"I know you're planning something! Just promise me that your next mad scientist-"

"-Vengeful-" he corrected.

"- _Vengeful_ scientist scheme doesn't involve the mass murder of millions of innocent people like last time. Do something, I don't know," she gestured in the empty air as she looked for the right word, "-nonlethal this time? I'm asking for the bare minimum from you. _Please?_ "

"Why Elaris, I'm shocked." he said, placing his one free hand on his chest. "I'm surprised you didn't aim for something higher like 'quit being evil' or 'turn yourself in'. You could be saving the whole galaxy right now by stopping me!"

"You asked for something smaller, so I'm asking for something smaller. I'll keep what you said in mind. At the very least, I'm going to ask for an actual office rather than the broom closet the next time I come into work. I'll quit if they-" The 'they' meaning 'Qwark' in this case, "-start pushing me around again, I promise." 

"If they push you around, push back. Push back until they _bleed._ " he hissed. 

There was something in that statement that reminded her of a day that happened at Galactic Rangers Headquarters two years ago. Dr. Nefarious - the Nefarious that still had flesh and skin - was busy stirring his coffee and talking to his trainee Elaris about the new episode of Annihilation Nation when Captain Qwark 'accidentally' bumped him while walking past, spilling it on his shirt. This caused Nefarious to throw down his coffee mug down on the ground and yell "It's a good thing we're on the same side or else you'd be DEAD, Qwark! _DEAD!_ "

He quit several days later to start plotting an evil scheme that involved atomizing all of Aleero City. 

"I will." she said with that comforting memory still hanging about in her brain. "Thanks for still looking out for me." And with those words, she let go of his arm and let the supervillain go.

He stood there, looking like he had something more to say, but then he decided to turn around and skitter into the shadows, disappearing from her sight. There was the sound of an airlock opening in the distance and then he was gone, disappearing like a bad nightmare.

Two minutes later, Elaris was able to get the lights working again in her little spaceship just as Cora radioed in and asked if everything was alright. Elaris cheerfully lied and said "sure, everything's fine, nothing's happened since you last checked in, lighting's a bit funky but otherwise nothing new!" and then she was alone again, still staring at Umbris. 

As she sat back in the driver's seat and stared out at the endless sea of stars and planets stretching out in front of her, the rest of her patrol shift weighing down on her shoulders, she had to give voice to a lingering thought in her head.

"If this is just a really weird dream I'm going to be _so_ mad."

\------------

Back in the current makeshift lair of Dr. Nefarious (a repurposed garage situated on the surface of planet Umbris littered with the broken corpses of several dozen repair droids), the vengeful scientist-turned-robot was brooding dramatically in a chair as his butler Lawrence polished him. He sat there, hand propping up his skeletal chin, and sighed. Giving an old friend some helpful life advice never turned out the way you wanted it to. 

"So how did it go, Sir?" Lawrence asked in a tone of voice that implied that he really couldn't care less.

"I asked her to quit the Galactic Rangers, and in return, she asked me to not kill anyone in my next evil scheme." he said nonchalantly as his butler sprayed him with cleanser and started wiping his glass dome of a head. "I think she's _worried_ about me, Lawrence!"

He didn't say it out loud, but he was worried for Elaris too. Maybe he _should've_ asked her to join him after all. He saw the news articles coming out involving the Deplanetizer incident. All the praise was aimed at Ratchet and Qwark with nothing mentioning Elaris. He was certain that she had a hand in moving the entire space station. At least if she was working by his side, two vengeful scientists, both outcasts from the Galactic Rangers, she'd get the recognition she'd truly deserve!

The irony of him plotting out her delightfully evil future after warning her not to become evil like him didn't even cross his mind. 

"Did you tell her 'why don't fret, my dear, my next evil scheme merely involves turning all organic lifeforms into robots with a giant non-planet destroying laser'?"

Dr. Nefarious laughed maniacally.

"Of course not!" he yelled, springing from his chair and knocking Lawrence aside. He was practically strutting like a peacock, his feet crunching as he stepped on discarded robot parts, as he marched his way towards a wall, where a giant red button just waited for him to slam his fist into.

He cackled in glee as the room was suddenly illuminated with the hologram of a massive, planet-sized device, the latest of evil concoctions pulled from his brain, now converted into wires and chips by the cruel hand of fate. 

He called it the Biobliterator.

"I want that part to be a surprise!"

\---


	2. What's A Little Gaming Between Friends?

  
\----------------

Three weeks had passed since the incident on Umbris and Elaris couldn't be happier.

The weapons technician was grinning from ear to ear as she entered her workplace, practically bouncing on her heels as the events of today's meeting still making her giddy. She set down a bunch of cardboard boxes she was holding down on an empty table and pumped her fists in the air. A scream of joy filled the air.

 _At last!_ She was moving out of the broom closet and getting a proper laboratory! They finally listened to her! No more bottles of cleanser and pails of dirty water! No more having to say "excuse me" and awkwardly shove past the janitor to get to her office! No more terrible smells!

At first the process was as slow as it always was - everyone kept pushing back her appeals because they kept saying they had more pressing matters to attend to, where would we find the space, surely this could wait when we just saved the galaxy, Qwark has another book signing today - but then she did something that they didn't expect from a passive nerd like her. Elaris dug in her heels and let herself get a little angry about this issue. She'd raise her voice a little bit, she demanded a little more respect, until finally the group listened.

In other words, she channeled a bit of her inner Dr. Nefarious.

But just a little bit. The part of him that didn't want to murder anybody.

Elaris looked at the corkboard in her office with Dr. Nefarious's photo still pinned to it, where the perfectly happy and organic Nefarious smiled with the blissful unawareness of what would happen to him after that picture was taken. She couldn't help but smile back, even though the person in the photograph tried to blow up the galaxy - with her in it - last month.

She really did have that weird dream meeting with Dr. Nefarious to thank. As the days went by, she started to see that one incident with the robot version of Dr. Nefarious sneaking on her spaceship and coaching her on her job as less of a thing that happened and more like a vision. A spiritual calling if you will.

Sure, it _felt_ real. And for a while, she earnestly believed that it _was_ real. But as the days went by and as her brain thought about it for a little while longer, Elaris began to rationalize to herself that no, it _didn't_ happen and her patrol shift near Umbris was so boring that she fell asleep and had a strange nightmare of a screaming zombie robot telling her to quit her job.

Which is why she wasn't worried about the notification from a "DrN42" popping up on her account after she started an online session of Resistance: Fall of Blarg after her shift.

Apparently they were already friends and their last online activity was years ago, but it was an older game so she thought nothing of it. She accepted and settled into her chair, also thinking nothing of it when the voice chat booted on. She cracked open a can of Nanotech Gamer Fuel Cola (" _the drink of true 133ts!_ " as it said on the side) and adjusted her headset.

"What's up, DrN42." she said into the microphone, in the tone of voice she used for livestreams.

" _Testing...testing..._ "

Elaris made a tiny yell and jumped, her can of Cola flying out of her hand and crashing onto the floor.

Yes, there was no denying it. The voice on the other end of voice chat was Dr. Nefarious. The Dr. Nefarious that was supposed to be dead. The Dr. Nefarious that was supposed to be a figment of her imagination.

Immediately she remembered why the username was still on her friend's list - before he quit the Galactic Rangers, Elaris would try to get him to blow off a little steam by playing a couple online matches, usually after he got into another shouting match with Captain Qwark. She remembered days where both of them were standing side by side in the crowded broom closet, their shoulders touching as they were both in The Zone...

She shook that memory away before she dwelled too hard on it, her face flushing. She hated how much she missed the company of a criminal mad scientist.

That also meant she didn't just imagine that one meeting back on her spaceship. The weird robot in her dream that was yelling to a Lawrence over a cellphone and breathing like he still had a pair of lungs was real and now he was playing an online game with his old work username. Her mind reeled at the revelation.

"I heard a yelp so speakers seem to be working..." he said calmly, snapping her back into reality.

" _How...._ " she stopped herself. "Okay, seriously, what are you even _doing?_ " Her brain was still trying to play catch-up with what was going on. She fought to calm herself down - it's not like he could physically threaten her over an online game or anything after all - as a harsh metallic voice filtered through her speakers.

"I ran into a bit of inventor's block. Managed to get the wi-fi working from the crash site and worked my way there." he explained evenly. She couldn't see, but back on Umbris, he was currently sitting in a chair made out of stolen spaceship parts and twiddling a small wrench in-between two claws as he gently tweaked the sensitivity of his game controller, which was a Frankensteinian chimera of scrap metal and loose wires sitting in his lap.

Behind him, Lawrence was silently dusting. Lawrence didn't want to play, which was fine for Nefarious, because he didn't want to construct a second controller.

"You..." Elaris was still having a hard time making sentences work.

"If you must know, if you take about five repair droids and rip the wiring and chips out of their miserable carcasses, you can cobble together a working game controller out of them." his voice remained calm and at a normal speaking volume, but running underneath it was a seething undercurrent of hatred. "All you really need is some soldering materials and a small screwdriver."

"This is insane." she said, stating the obvious.

"I get that a lot, yes." he continued. Lawrence made a quiet amused noise under his breath but Nefarious wasn't paying attention. "It takes an additional two repair droids for the headset-"

"What if I tell the Galactic Rangers that you're still alive?" she blurted out suddenly, the words falling out of her mouth. She immediately clapped her hands over her mouth in an act of instant regret, but Nefarious didn't seem phased.

"Then you'd have to explain to them how you'd know this information, Elaris." he answered. Even though she could only hear his voice, she could just feel the smug smile crossing his metallic face. "And wouldn't _that_ be an awkward conversation to your fellow galactic heroes?"

 _Crud,_ Elaris thought to herself. _No wonder he was so calm._

"I'm also using a frequency jammer so don't try tracing my connection back to me. One of the first things I learned during my untimely stay in a prison cell was how to leech wi-fi and go completely _undetected_..!" he said with a sinister voice, his words taking on such an evil tone that didn't betray the fact that the main reason he learned how to leech wi-fi was because he didn't want to miss any seasonal events in League of Legendaries and wanted to keep his place in the top PVP DPS lists.

"Are you going to use this as blackmail?" she said in a tinier voice than she meant to.

" _N-No?_ " he said incredulously, taken aback. The way he said it instantly defused most of the tension hanging in the air. He sounded almost hurt, of all things. "Calm down, Elaris. I just want to play Resistance and I just happened to see you online. What kind of person do you take me for?"

' _Someone who's backstabbed everyone he's ever worked for?'_ flashed through her mind and while she didn't say it out loud, Nefarious could practically read her mind from the long silence that followed, which caused him to clear his cybernetic throat in embarrassment. There he goes doing the non-robot things again. At least he was consistent.

"I just want to play one online match. You know...for old time's sake. After that, I'll disappear. What do you say?"

She wasn't sure what made her say yes. Was it something in the tone of his voice? Was it curiosity? Or did she believe this was another weird dream, similar to the previous weird dream back when she was patrolling Umbris?

' _Stupidity, probably_ ' she thought to herself as DrN42's character loaded into the waiting room. She did the wave emote. In response, DrN42 shuddered a bit and then started walking into a wall. She heard grumbles of annoyance and the angry hammering of buttons as DrN42's attempt at emoting proved disastrous. He managed to get the dance emote working before he sank into the decorative pool that was in the training area map and drowned.

"Are you having any problems there, buddy?" she asked as he respawned and then proceeded to get his character wedged between two bushes. The hammering of buttons continued echoing into her ears.

"Ever had all of your fingers surgically removed and replaced with sharp, clumsy metal claws meant for rending organic flesh and not much beyond that?"

"No?"

"Well....that makes _one_ of us...." he said glumly as his character lurched forward right into another wall. He controlled like someone who never played a video game in his life. He found the fire button and his character started shooting wildly into the air.

"Did you even practice beforehand?" she said in amusement, watching him figure out the controls.

"N-no...." he admitted sheepishly. His character fell into the pool again. "I'll say I have bad lag!"

"Well, too late for any regrets because our match is starting." She warned him, her eyes locked on the countdown clicking down on the HUD. A smile of amusement crossed her lips. This was going to be a virtual trainwreck and she was ready for it.

"Wh-what-"

Before Dr. Nefarious could finish his weak protest, they were both immediately loaded into bleak post apocalyptic ruins. Shades of brown and toppled skyscrapers surrounded them from all directions. Elaris adjusted her headset like a grizzled war veteran as the heavy metal soundtrack of Fall of Blarg flooded the broom closet.

To say that Nefarious "sucked" at this game was an understatement, and possibly an insult to creatures that sucked things for nutrients. Nefarious was so bad at this game that Elaris wondered if there was a correlation between his sudden drop in gaming skill and his unwanted transformation, and made sure to make a mental note to never turn into a robot. He played worse than someone who intentionally played bad for cheap clicks on YouTube, and that was saying something. Elaris was positive was one of his deaths was because he accidentally shot himself in the face with his own weapon, and she didn't even think that was possible in Fall of Blarg.

"Wow buddy, you're kinda bad at this game!" Elaris said as she killed the soldier that was camping on Dr. Nefarious's body and keeping him from respawning.

" _SHUT UP,_ I'M REALLY RUSTY!" was his response.

Elaris couldn't help herself. She was on the battlefield of Resistance: Fall of Blarg - a game where she livestreamed with the Galaxy's greatest champions, a game where she ruled with an iron fist as Queen. He was in her domain now and not even his new robot form could protect him from her fury.

"Oh no, are you already getting rust?" she mocked playfully.

" **NOT** HELPING!"

"I could suggest some derusting agents, I know you're new to the whole robot thi-"

"WHAT WAS THAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU, MY HEADSET'S ACTING UP!"

Elaris broke out into a fit of laughter, which caused Nefarious to nervously chuckle on his end. She couldn't help it - as absurd as this situation was, she was having a lot of fun. Not even with the wild difference in skill level between her and her partner did her foes stand a chance. She was in Gamer Mode and nothing can stop her now.

One online match became three. Then five. Then nine. Every match, Elaris carried them to victory. While she did enjoy playing babysitter to a wildly flailing partner that drew enemy fire, Dr. Nefarious was a fast learner and actually figured out how to not suck and die on the battlefield. By the fifth match, some of his old Galactic Ranger skill began to come back and soon he was able to pick off one or two kills himself. Still not as good as Elaris, the Iron Queen of Resistance, but at least he wasn't so much of a dead weight anymore.

And honestly, she was having the best gaming session in months. She missed having a gaming partner. In this brief happy moment of leeching company wi-fi to keep her own Internet bill down, Elaris forgot she was playing video games with a scary robot monster that once pointed a giant space station sized weapon at Umbris and tried to blow up the entire galaxy.

_'Umbris...'_

The exhilarating rush of video games soon gave way to curiosity. Elaris checked the clock. She had been gaming with a bloodthirsty madman for a solid hour now. Normally she was out of Galactic Ranger Headquarters much earlier than this, even during days where she hung back to fix a few bugs on overtime. Now, she wanted to use the voice chat to its full advantage rather than blast enemy soldiers.

"Hey Nef." she said, setting their group to private and cancelling their next match.

" _Hrm?_ "

Elaris looked around. She checked behind her to make sure there was no one walking down the hallway of HQ and then, after a brief hesitation, she lowered her voice and asked the question that was burning on the back of her head, even though she was dreading the actual answer.

"Why did you want to blow up Umbris and kill everyone?"

There was a quick cackle of disbelief - a sudden, pointed " **HAH!** " - over the other end.

"Where did everyone in the Solana Galaxy get this idea? How is blowing up Umbris going to kill everyone? Umbris is an uninhibited wasteland where Qwark has his stupid training base for squishy meatheads! I thought my motive would be crystal clear in me targeting that worthless mudball of a planet! No one would miss it!"

"W- _what..._ " Elaris uttered in disbelief as her team partner suddenly broke into a rant befitting of a true gamer.

"Don't think I don't read the news! I've been seeing the propaganda from both Qwark's autobiography and that holovid that I was planning to "wipe out everything". Why would I wipe out everything? There's no one to gloat to when you wipe out everything! What did everyone think I was going to do - go to the Bogon Galaxy and march up to the doors of Megacorp like " _guess who has six fingers and blew up billions of people_ "?"

He drew in a breath to calm himself; yelling at Elaris didn't feel nearly as good as yelling at Qwark or at some weird Lombax kid. "I swear you try to atomize one city in a fit of rage and everyone thinks you're a genocidal maniac." he added at last.

She thought back about the Deplanetizer and the holovid made in honor of the heroics of Ratchet and Captain Qwark. They added a couple scenes for Dr. Nefarious about how he was going to reduce the Solana Galaxy into space dust. The planets were perfectly aligning and Umbris has an unstable core - it just made sense that he _would've_ planned this all out.

"Whoa whoa whoa, you mean to tell me that you set up the Deplanetizer to blow up a planet with an unstable core - a move that would've set off a chain reaction and wiped out everything in the galaxy including yourself - entirely by **accident**?"

"Yes!" he said instantly. There was then an awkward pause as his brain caught up to him. "...wait that would've _actually_ destroyed the galaxy...?"

" _Yes!_ Yes that would've destroyed all the other planets!" she barked back, a little louder than her normal speaking tone.

He went silent for a long period of time, a disconcerting period of time that made Elaris wonder if he lost connection.

Finally he spoke, and his voice was suddenly really quiet.

"I didn't know that..." he admitted.

" ** _WHAAAAAT?!_** " she screamed.

She couldn't help herself. Anger was flooding her senses and clouding her thoughts. Maybe it was the heat of the online battlefield but she did not like the idea that Nefarious almost killed her - not because he wanted to! She _accepted_ the idea that he had devolved into a bloodthirsty killer at this point! - but because he didn't know a goddamn thing about geology.

"Wait but that means you would've died too..." he added as his brain put the pieces together.

"YES! YES I WOULD'VE DIED, YOU **IDIOT!** "

He didn't answer, but his embarrassed silence really said it all.

"I swear do you actually spend longer than fifteen minutes thinking your plans through!?" Elaris said, her voice raising in volume until it became a harsh, almost Nefarious-like yell.

"Wow Elaris, you're getting really mad at that game! Is your teammate a total noob or something?" Ratchet called from the hallway. He had caught the last thing that Elaris had said as he was walking by, a doughnut still hovering near his mouth. Ratchet was usually one of the last people to leave Galactic Headquarters on account of all the extra-curricular training he liked doing.

"Yes! Yes, he's very much a total noob! He's normally much smarter than this but he nearly went and got everyone killed!" Elaris yelled back, gesturing vaguely at the screen where both her and DrN42's characters were staring at a poorly-textured wall.

There was a mild chuckle from the Lombax. "Okay Elaris, talk to you later!" and with a quick wave of a hand and a Lombax tail, he was gone.

Another awkward silence descended between them as Elaris fought to get her emotions back under control. It felt **weird** being the angry one. She was so used to being the calm, collected nerd next to the angry, raging nerd back when the two of them worked together as the Nerd Herd. She was used to being the one that would calm Nefarious down, not the other way around, and her gaming partner on the other end knew it from the way he hesitantly tried to help.

"Are you okay there, Ellie?"

 _ **Ellie.**_ Like a needle puncturing a balloon, all of her fury drained out of her body when she heard that nickname. It had been years since she last heard anyone call her that pet name, the name she said her grandma used to call her one day while she and Nefarious were trying to fix the ammo capacity of the Bomb Glove, and just the tiniest act of him remembering it calmed her down. Her shoulders sagged.

"I swear you can be so _stupid_ sometimes!" she said, but there was no fire behind her words anymore.

"Okay okay...so I made a rookie mistake!" he said with a chuckle. Was he _humoring_ her? Was the killer robot actually trying to make her feel better? _Why?_ "Next time I'll plan better! The best part about being a supervillain is that you can always try, try again until the heroes lose!"

"How did you make it all the way through med school and then build the blueprints for a giant space station armed with a planet-destroying laser without knowing a single thing about astrogeology?" Elaris said, her face resting in one of her palms.

"How was I to know planets had different cores?"

"That's something you learn in the fifth grade!"

"I never did really pay attention to geology in school..." 

Despite that, Elaris felt better. Even though it still kinda stung that she almost died because Mr. Loose Cannon didn't think too hard on the consequences of his own actions, thinking about the previous game sessions brought her happy mood back. She found herself smiling again. He may have allied himself with Chairman Drek and nearly killed them all, but deep down he was the intelligent yet idiotic nerd that she shared a broom closet with, and that brightened her mood in a strange, confusing way.

"Sorry for yelling at you, Nef. I did have a great time!"

"I did too!" he shouted back, his mood immediately bouncing back now that Elaris was happy again. The Galactic Ranger decided not to think too hard on the fact that Nefarious seemed genuinely concerned for her. This situation was already weird enough as is.

"Well, I gotta go now, but thank you for talking to me back on Umbris. I wouldn't be moving out of the broom closet and into an actual laboratory if it wasn't for you!" When he didn't immediately reply back, only giving her a stunned silence in return, she didn't even wait for an answer when she turned off the game. Satisfied, Elaris finally removed the headset and ran a hand across her head. It really was time she got back to her apartment. Leftover ravioli didn't eat itself.

She got up from her chair, took one step, and immediately heard the sad, fizzy squish of her foot colliding with a cola puddle that had been laying there for a solid hour.

Elaris sighed in mild disappointment. She couldn't leave yet.

"I spent two bolts on that soda too..."

\------------

"Did you have fun, sir?"

Dr. Nefarious looked up at Lawrence as he fiddled with his eldritch abomination of a gamer rig, his claws entangled in some loose hanging wires and a wide, childish grin on his skeletal face. His handcrafted gamer PC made from Deplanetizer guts and some repair bots was like a new pet to him, and he cherished it as such.

"Did you see us, Lawrence!? We won every match! We **annihilated** everyone that stood in our way! No one could get past our defenses!" he shouted with all the giddy excitement of a grade schooler. He was gesturing wildly, communicating as much with his arms and hand movements as his face, and from the way he was wrapped up in his PC wires, it was a miracle he didn't strangle himself or trip over.

"Masterful work. I can see why you're so popular with the ladies." Lawrence quipped, sounding about as excited as someone filing paperwork at the DMV.

"And then she told me she actually took my advice and then thanked me for it! She listened to me! You remember, back when I first became a robot! She _listened!_ "

"I think she likes you, sir."

"I think she does! Isn't that wonderful, Lawrence!?" he practically screamed.

This would've been a happy moment, and indeed the mad scientist could feel a warm, fuzzy feeling spread through the circuits in his chest as his mechanical heart fluttered, thinking about his old science partner, if Lawrence didn't immediately chime in with a curt "So why didn't you ask for any of Captain Qwark's patrol schedules or passwords from her again?", ruining the moment instantly.

The warm happy feeling went cold. The excitement bled out of him.

Oh right. The real reason why he logged onto Resistance: Fall of Blarg around the exact same time as Elaris. The reason that Elaris had almost guessed before they ended up just fooling around in an online video game. His diabolical revenge scheme that he had cooked up after he realized that he and Elaris still had each other friended. His fullproof plan that would lead to Qwark's demise.

Dr. Nefarious sucked in a breath and dragged a hand slowly across his face, suddenly feeling very tired.

_"Oh..."_


End file.
